[122] Cong. Globe, 1871, p. 51.
[123] See House report No. 50, 37th Congress, 3d session, page 38.
[124] Rhodes, History of the United States, vii, 182-89.
[125] This interview was reprinted in the New York Times of December 6. It is corroborated in sentiment by the Trumbull manuscripts of that date, but it was probably not intended for publication. It purports to be a conversation between Trumbull and an ex-Senator.
CHAPTER XXV
THE CINCINNATI CONVENTION
The Liberal Republicans of Missouri held a state convention at Jefferson City, January 24, 1872. They adopted a platform which affirmed the sovereignty of the Union, emancipation, equality of rights, enfranchisement, complete amnesty, tariff reform, civil service reform, local self-government, and impartial suffrage. They also called a national mass convention to meet at Cincinnati on the first Monday in May.
This call was at once endorsed by General J. D. Cox, George Hoadley, Stanley Matthews, and J. B. Stallo, four of the most eminent citizens of Ohio, the first of whom had been a member of President Grant's Cabinet. Mr. Matthews, in an interview, expressed the hope that the Democrats would join in nominating a candidate for the presidency of the type of Charles Francis Adams, William S. Groesbeck, Lyman Trumbull, or Salmon P. Chase.
The movement spread like wildfire. Groups of Republicans, eminent in character and in public service in all the states, proclaimed their adhesion to it and declared their intention to participate in the convention. It had also the active support of the Springfield Republican, the Cincinnati Commercial, and the Chicago Tribune, and the sympathy of the New York Evening Post, the Nation, and the New York Tribune. Democratic sympathy was manifested early and found expression in the columns of the Louisville Courier-Journal, whose editor, Henry Watterson, took a keen interest in the preliminaries of the Cincinnati meeting and whose coöperation was gladly welcomed. The New York World, edited by Manton Marble, gave passive support to the movement by advising Democrats to conform to present facts and not seek to revive or sustain the dead issues of the war and Reconstruction.